by Megan Crane
But maybe letting his cock do the initial fact-finding here instead of his temper wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had.
“Some stuff you should know now, in case you get tempted to lose your mind while you’re here,” he said, drawling a little bit because he was naked and she was wide-eyed and he was definitely asshole enough to enjoy that. He widened his stance, crossed his arms. And did absolutely nothing to hide his hard cock that pointed right at her. Such an excellent interrogator, that one. “You can try to grab a weapon from the wall, or anywhere else you might find one. I wouldn’t respect you if you didn’t at least think about it.” Sure enough, her gray gaze flicked to an old battle-ax he’d hung high over his screen and then back. “Take that ax. On the off chance you manage to get it down without me hearing it, then drag it into the bedroom where I’m guessing you’ll have to have boned me into a coma for me not to know what you’re doing, you’d have to get some height and power into your swing to do much more than tickle me. That would mean climbing up on the bed and lifting it up over your head. You’ll never get on or off that bed without me hearing you no matter how good that pussy is and I don’t think you can lift an ax at all, much less over your head.” He smirked. “You’re not much of a warrior, are you?”
She didn’t like that. Any of it, he’d guess. Color rose in her cheeks and she straightened as if he’d insulted her. Gravely. It only made him harder.
“Not all warriors have to be able to swing metal things around all the time, you know.”
“Yeah, Helena, they do. That’s the definition of a warrior. If there’s no blood it’s not a battle.”
“There are all kinds of battles, you—” Wisely, she didn’t call him whatever name hovered there on her tongue. “Just because you’re good at one kind doesn’t mean other people aren’t equally good at other kinds.”
“Unless the other kinds of battles you’re talking about can take my head off in hand-to-hand combat or make me bleed out where I stand, I don’t really care.” Tyr sighed. “This isn’t a debate about your combat skills. I already know they suck. My point is, if somehow you managed to incapacitate me with one of these weapons instead of just making me laugh my ass off at your attempt, you’d have two choices. The balcony or the door.”
Helena frowned at him, and he still couldn’t figure out why he didn’t hate it when she did that, when very few other women dared. It got the same reaction out of him as when other women pressed their tits against him or rubbed themselves off while he watched. And what the hell was that? It shouldn’t be possible. Especially not from a woman who could be Krajic’s little spy, for all he knew.
“There’s nothing but a two-story sheer drop to the ground from that balcony. I’m guessing you have no idea how to fall, so I wouldn’t try that unless you want to break a few bones. You won’t find it as funny as I will.” Her eyes narrowed, and that made Tyr feel a little bit better about things, everything being equal. “You could always try to walk out. Out the door, down the hall. See if you can make it past all the brothers and the camp girls and whoever else might be hanging out in the Lodge without anyone wondering what you’re up to. But what happens if you do?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“Let’s say you make it out of the Lodge. Let’s pretend you have some magical invisibility shield that keeps any clan member from getting up in your business while that happens, which is by the way unlikely. So there you are, standing out on the mountainside, free and clear. Then what?” He saw the very moment she understood what he was getting at. Something in her gaze went dark. And there was no raft of conflicting shit inside him about that. He just liked it. “The only way off this island is by boat. Unless you feel like taking your chances with the sharks and the rocks and the undertow. And let me make sure you understand that here in the islands, we get our panties in a vicious twist when anyone touches our boats without permission, much less tries to steal them. I feel the same way about all my toys. Are you following me?”
“Yes.” Her voice was clipped. “I’m trapped.”
“Yeah.” Tyr didn’t do a thing to hide his intense satisfaction. He didn’t even try. “You really are.”
Some women would cry at that, no matter their associations to known mercenary scumbags. More than a few big-ass burly farmer-types had broken down and wept when faced with their total isolation from the mainland and the world they’d known all their lives—that and zero possibility they’d ever make it back. Tyr expected a little glassiness around her eyes at the very least.
But not Helena. She pressed her lips together. She stood even straighter, which didn’t seem possible, and made her look like some kind of sea-battered princess besides. His favorite kind. Then he realized she was staring maybe a little too hard at the pile of his dirty clothes on the floor.
“What did you do with my tablet?” she asked, and if she was trying to sound casual, she completely failed.
He hadn’t forgotten what this was all about for even a second: Krajic and that hunting party and the orders Wulf had given him that had nothing to do with his cock—unless that approach got the king the information he wanted faster.
“Why?” he asked her. “Why do you want it?”
Did she get a little pale at that? At his clipped, hostile tone? He thought she did, but then she tilted her chin up in that insanely aggressive way of hers that he was pretty sure she didn’t know was laughable at best. Tyr found it hard to believe she was in league with that festering sore of a mercenary bastard—but then, it could be that very soft prettiness that made her effective in whatever game this was. This was a hard and grim world, what was left of it. It was better not to underestimate anyone, even seemingly delicate women like this one.
“Because it’s mine,” she told him, her voice very crisp and precise. Maybe too much of both, when he could see her how carefully she was holding herself. He’d bet anything that she was shaking where she stood. “Does there have to be any other reason?”
Tyr eyed her. He let his mouth go cruel and watched her swallow, hard. Then again when he crossed back to where he’d left her, standing only a few steps into the big room as if she was afraid walking in any farther was a clear sign of total surrender and she didn’t want to make it.
Too bad, baby, he thought, with an intense surge of satisfaction that was as hot as it was deep. This is only the beginning. You’re going to do a lot more than surrender.
“You’re not keeping up, sweetheart.” He stopped in front of her and tugged the wool sheet from her grip, then pulled it off of her. He tossed that with his dirty stuff on the floor, keeping his eyes on her. “You’re mine. That makes what little you brought with you mine, too. You should think less about things that don’t matter and more about—”
“Let me guess. Making you happy.”
“It’s not that hard.” He searched her face, though he didn’t know what he expected to see. Krajic, right there? Stamped like too much sun and reddened treachery across the bridge of her fine nose? “You looked like you were getting friendly with the camp girls on the boat. Do you think they’d volunteer to go on raids with us if they hated it here so much? If it was such a trial to keep the brothers happy?”
“Maybe they were plotting their escape.”
“Around all the cocks in their mouths?” He didn’t know why he reached out then, or why he pushed the dark mess of her hair back, showing him more of her face. He told himself it was to track her expression. To look for lies. Evidence of collusion. But that didn’t explain the way he did it, as if it was a caress. “Maybe. But if so they suck at plotting. They hung out on the ships while we went inland. If they wanted to bail, no one was there to stop them except one guard—for the ships, not the women.” Tyr shrugged. “No one left. No one tried.”
Helena blinked in that way she did, as if she was taking in new information and it didn’t quite fit with what she already had in there. “Okay, well. They were very informative.”
“I bet they were
.” Watching her cozy up to the camp girls had rubbed Tyr the wrong way. Because Helena wasn’t clan property. She hadn’t auditioned for the brothers or signaled her availability in any of the usual ways. She’d chosen him to play chicken with in that courtyard and he wasn’t done with her yet. She was his, no matter what secrets she was carrying around in there, and no matter how he’d be forced to react once he knew them.
And it didn’t matter how belligerent she got with that chin of hers, as if she thought it was a weapon all its own. “They wanted to be sure I knew my options.”
“What options?” He reached down and took the hem of her T-shirt in one hand, yanking it up her torso until she scowled directly at him. “You have one option, Helena. Me. If I were you, I’d hurry up and get on board with that.”
Her scowl deepened. But then she lifted her arms obediently anyway, and that sent a spike of pure lust slamming straight down into his cock, like a hammer. He tugged the shirt over her head, going slowly to keep from yanking out her hair, and he opted not to ask himself why he was so careful all of a sudden. As if he was one of the soft-handed healers on the island, not the war chief of the goddamned clan and celebrated for his brutality, for god’s sake, especially in the face of a woman who might well be the enemy.
Tyr threw her T-shirt in the pile and reached for the button of her stiff jeans, stained with mud from the woods, but she batted his hands away, still scowling ferociously, and he laughed at that. Then grabbed her chin in his hand and forced her furious, wary gray eyes to his.
“What part of make me happy was that?”
“I can do it myself.” She considered. “For your pleasure, I mean.”
“It’s not a death sentence, Helena. Most women fight for the privilege to please me. Maybe rethink the dire tone.”
He watched her eyes go dark and mutinous, and her lush little mouth flatten with temper, but she didn’t say any of the snotty words he could see piling up on her tongue. And there was some part of him that noted if she really was trying to play him, this was a weird way to go about it. Tyr didn’t want to think about that. He let her go and then, just to mess with her, kept unbuttoning her jeans until he could shove them down over her hips. He had the pleasure of watching her hands ball into fists and her eyes flash, but she didn’t say anything. Almost as if she was learning. She let him draw the jeans down her legs without any further attitude, then she stepped out of them and let him peel those heavy socks off, too, all while maintaining her angry, tense silence.
Rather than making an attempt to seduce him, which, now that he was thinking about it, would have been the obvious play. Again, not the way he’d expect someone in league with his enemy to behave.
“Good girl,” he rumbled, to see if that would provoke her into shooting off her mouth again. But she held it together.
So while he was crouched down there anyway, he shoved the tangle of her dirty clothes with the rest and took a good look at her, at last. It had been dark and rainy the last time he’d seen her anything like naked, out there in the dark by the fire. That had been good.
This was better. Her skin was a rich olive shade that worked well with her glossy black hair, even matted the way it was now, and she was so smooth. No scars, no marks. No tattoos. Nothing but all that soft, tempting flesh stretched over her sweet little tits and her righteous handfuls of hip, that round ass he wanted to bite into and that pretty cunt of hers. He could smell her arousal, rich and female, and it was like a long, hot lick down the length of his cock.
But he was getting ahead of himself.
Tyr stood slowly, letting her take the same kind of good look at him. He liked the way she started to breathe a little too fast, the way her eyes glazed over and her lips parted. He liked the way her gaze caught on his tattoos, on the patterns and shapes in the clan insignia he wore stamped over his heart. The vine that wrapped around his arm and told the story of his battles, fight by bloody fight. He’d need to add to it again when the winter came. He liked the way her hands twitched at her side, as if she wanted to reach out and touch his ink. Touch him.
He didn’t know what her connection to Krajic was, but he would. In the meantime, he thought it was high time he exploited the heat between them. Let it do his work for him.
And if he lost himself a little bit in her while that happened, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. It would lead to the same end.
He turned then and moved past her, reaching for the phone Gunnar had wired into all the walls of the Lodge. He dialed downstairs on the rotary pad, the sound of the dial too loud in a quiet room where one of them was holding her breath. He muttered his orders when they answered down in the community area, and he wasn’t surprised to find Helena gaping at him when he hung up and turned back to her.
“Is that an actual telephone? I’ve never seen one in real life. I didn’t think anyone had them anymore.”
Tyr started to tell her what Gunnar had told them when he’d set it all up a few years back, tearing up the walls and ranting about their ancient walkie-talkies and those crank-wound things they’d used until then. All that babble about power currents and the heavy barrels of fuel the raiders liberated from the mainland. And the wiring that he’d hidden away and then run out into the generators in the caverns Because batteries are annoying and you morons will burn this place down … But Tyr didn’t need to share secrets like that with potential enemies.
So he only grunted instead. “Now you have.”
He wrapped his hand around her neck again in the way he was starting to think felt a little too comfortable, her nape fit his palm so well. And Helena didn’t say a word as he led her out through the balcony doors and onto the wide, wooden deck. The ocean waited there in the distance, that cold blue, like the jealous whore she was. The bay was clogged with all the rocky little islands Tyr knew by heart, having spent half his childhood either hiding out on them or taking his freezing cold turn on the barrier watch out near the mountain channel that was the main harbor’s first line of defense. The wind was colder and fiercer this high up the mountain, but he loved it. The slap and the slice of it, reminding him he still lived while so many of his enemies had fallen, many at his own hand.
Reminding him Helena was also an enemy, until proven otherwise, and here, too, he would reign supreme. Because that was what he did.
He could feel a shiver run through Helena, soft and smooth as she was, and not used to the islands and their hard-ass, in-your-face weather. He walked her over to the bubbling tub that sat on a raised platform in the far corner, with the best view in the whole of the Lodge, as far as Tyr was concerned, though today he couldn’t concentrate on much besides the things he planned to do to this woman and the things she needed to tell him when he was done.
“Get in,” he ordered her.
She shivered again when he let go of her. He thought she’d dive in immediately to get out of the cold, but instead she reached her hand out, hesitant and slow, to skim it over the surface of the water.
“It’s hot.” She breathed that out.
“It better be hot.”
“And how did you do that? Raider magic?” She didn’t look at him as she said that, she only dragged her palm back and forth over the foaming surface of the bath, almost as if she wanted magic to be the answer.
“The water is always hot. That’s island magic.” Why was he talking to her like this was a date? He glared at her instead, but she was still focused on the hot, bubbling water. “The camp girls fill the baths as soon as they hear the horn blow.”
Tyr didn’t wait for her. He swung himself into the steaming, bubbling water and sighed, sinking down to sprawl out on one of the built in benches, letting the heat soak into his battered body.
“You going to get in?” he asked after a moment. “Or am I going to have to throw you in again? You didn’t like that last time.”
Helena flushed, and he wondered what she was remembering just then. Which part of all the things flashing through him one after the
next, like the way her hard nipples tasted in his mouth, for example. But she gave him the sharp end of that chin again, and then she climbed up onto the platform and sat on the edge of the bubbling pool. Slowly, so slowly he thought he’d turned into the mountain looming all around them while he waited, she eased her legs up and then over, sliding her feet out over the water—
“Get your ass in the tub, woman,” he growled at her.
She shot him a look, then slid down into the water, letting out a soft little noise of pleasure as she went. Tyr saw the second her feet hit the bottom and the way she stood still, as if waiting to see how she felt before she reacted to it. A trait he liked in a woman he planned to fuck in a variety of ways, truth be told. She pulled that plush lip of hers between her teeth and made the kind of sighing sound he liked to hear when he was sliding deep inside a slick, hot pussy.
His cock, as usual, didn’t understand what the hold up was.
But he didn’t do any of the things he’d normally do to assuage that, because her eyes had drifted almost shut and because this was a means to an end, not the end in itself. He was having some trouble keeping that straight with her naked and right there. Not that she looked at him, or acknowledged him, or acted in any of the ways he’d have expected one of Krajic’s lackeys to act. She sank down into the water, tipping her head back in what looked like sheer bliss and then Helena completely submerged herself in the water.
She didn’t swim on over and suck his cock like the camp girls did. She didn’t try to entice him in any way at all. It was almost refreshing—or would have been, if he wasn’t still so hard it was verging on a medical condition.
